Gravity Lights website and updates (including receiving your own Gravity Light to test trial)
Quote from Gravity Lights innovators:
"GravityLight is a revolutionary new approach to storing energy and creating illumination. It takes only 3 seconds to lift the weight which powers GravityLight, creating 30 minutes of light on its descent. For free. Following the initial inspiration of using gravity, and years of perspiration, we have refined the design and it is now ready for production. We need your help to fund the tooling, manufacture and distribution of at least 1000 gravity powered lights. We will gift them to villagers in both Africa and India to use regularly. The follow-up research will tell us how well the lights met their needs, and enable us to refine the design for a more efficient MK2 version. Once we have proved the design, we will be looking to link with NGOs and partners to distribute it as widely as possible. When mass produced the target cost for this light is less than $5."
Why GravityLight?
"Did you know that there are currently over 1.5 billion people in the World who have no reliable access to mains electricity? These people rely, instead, on biomass fuels (mostly kerosene) for lighting once the sun goes down. Lift the weight and let gravity do the rest."
The World Bank estimates that, as a result, 780 million women and children inhale smoke which is equivalent to smoking 2 packets of cigarettes every day. 60% of adult, female lung-cancer victims in developing nations are non-smokers. The fumes also cause eye infections and cataracts, but burning kerosene is also more immediately dangerous: 2.5 million people a year, in India alone, suffer severe burns from overturned kerosene lamps. Burning Kerosene also comes with a financial burden: kerosene for lighting ALONE can consume 10 to 20% of a household's income. This burden traps people in a permanent state of subsistence living, buying cupfuls of fuel for their daily needs, as and when they can. The burning of Kerosene for lighting also produces 244 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide annually.
BBC Radio4 -Life without electricity in Liberia Listen here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_977...
Only 0.58% of the residents of Liberia have access to public electricity. Outside the capital city, public power is practically unheard of - just one of the very obvious results of the carnage caused to the country's infrastructure by the years of civil war.Reporting from Liberia's capital, Monrovia, Today programme presenter Evan Davis examined what kind of difficulties this presents to those living and working there.
Credentials:
We are Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves, London based designers who have spent 4 years developing GravityLight as an off-line project. We work for therefore.com, which has over 20 years of experience in designing and developing hand held computing and communication products for a host of pioneers including Psion, Toshiba, NEC, TomTom, Inmarsat, ICO, Sepura, Racal Acoustics, Voller Energy, FreePlay and SolarAid. We’re using a tried and tested manufacturer who has the right expertise to make GravityLight.
We have some links to partner organisations in Africa and need to do the same for India.
If you're part of an organisation and would like to get involved then please contact us.
We are particularly looking for contacts in South America.
Visit our skunk-works website here www.deciwatt.org
Check out John Keane's great Solar For Africa blog.
Quote from Gravity Lights innovators:
"GravityLight is a revolutionary new approach to storing energy and creating illumination. It takes only 3 seconds to lift the weight which powers GravityLight, creating 30 minutes of light on its descent. For free. Following the initial inspiration of using gravity, and years of perspiration, we have refined the design and it is now ready for production. We need your help to fund the tooling, manufacture and distribution of at least 1000 gravity powered lights. We will gift them to villagers in both Africa and India to use regularly. The follow-up research will tell us how well the lights met their needs, and enable us to refine the design for a more efficient MK2 version. Once we have proved the design, we will be looking to link with NGOs and partners to distribute it as widely as possible. When mass produced the target cost for this light is less than $5."
Why GravityLight?
"Did you know that there are currently over 1.5 billion people in the World who have no reliable access to mains electricity? These people rely, instead, on biomass fuels (mostly kerosene) for lighting once the sun goes down. Lift the weight and let gravity do the rest."
Lift the weight and let gravity do the rest.
The World Bank estimates that, as a result, 780 million women and children inhale smoke which is equivalent to smoking 2 packets of cigarettes every day. 60% of adult, female lung-cancer victims in developing nations are non-smokers. The fumes also cause eye infections and cataracts, but burning kerosene is also more immediately dangerous: 2.5 million people a year, in India alone, suffer severe burns from overturned kerosene lamps. Burning Kerosene also comes with a financial burden: kerosene for lighting ALONE can consume 10 to 20% of a household's income. This burden traps people in a permanent state of subsistence living, buying cupfuls of fuel for their daily needs, as and when they can. The burning of Kerosene for lighting also produces 244 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide annually.
BBC Radio4 -Life without electricity in Liberia Listen here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_977...
Only 0.58% of the residents of Liberia have access to public electricity. Outside the capital city, public power is practically unheard of - just one of the very obvious results of the carnage caused to the country's infrastructure by the years of civil war.Reporting from Liberia's capital, Monrovia, Today programme presenter Evan Davis examined what kind of difficulties this presents to those living and working there.
Credentials:
We are Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves, London based designers who have spent 4 years developing GravityLight as an off-line project. We work for therefore.com, which has over 20 years of experience in designing and developing hand held computing and communication products for a host of pioneers including Psion, Toshiba, NEC, TomTom, Inmarsat, ICO, Sepura, Racal Acoustics, Voller Energy, FreePlay and SolarAid. We’re using a tried and tested manufacturer who has the right expertise to make GravityLight.
We have some links to partner organisations in Africa and need to do the same for India.
If you're part of an organisation and would like to get involved then please contact us.
We are particularly looking for contacts in South America.
Visit our skunk-works website here www.deciwatt.org
Check out John Keane's great Solar For Africa blog.
